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228 § 303. SECTION IV. SYNTAX OF THE VERBS. CHAPT. I. General remarks Kinds of verbs. Auxiliaries. Periphrase of verbs. 303. The verbal flection, which plays a prominent part in Syntax books on Sanskrit Grammar, has not that paramount of the verb. character in Sanskrit Syntax, at least within the limits of the classic dialect. In days of old, the full value and the different properties of the rich store of the various verbal forms were generally much better un- derstood and more skilfully displayed in literature, than in and after the classic period. The history of the syntax of the Sanskrit verb is a history of decay. Some verbal forms get wholly out of use, others become rare or are no more employed in their proper way. In this manner the conjunctive mood () has been lost be- tween the Vedic Period and Pâini, and in post-Pâninean times the differences between the past tenses are disap- pearing, and upon the whole the tendency of substitut- ing participles and verbal nouns for the finite verb see 9; 14, 1°; 234 is increasing. Similarly the fa- culty of expressing by means of mere flection, not only tenses, moods and voices, but also newly framed verbs: causatives, desideratives, intensives, denominatives, has been much impaired in practice, though it has never ceased to be recognised by theory. In fact, it is only the causatives that have retained their old elas- ticity and are still made of any verbal root, but the desideratives and denominatives are as a rule em- —